Tuesday, November 4, 2014

“The Andreasson Affair: The True Story of a Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind”

“The
Andreasson Affair” True Story of a Close Encounter

“The Andreasson
Affair: The True Story of a Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind”

In the early
1990s, Dr. John Mack, a Harvard University psychiatrist, inquired into what,
exactly, goes on with people who say they were kidnapped by aliens. Skeptical
but curious, he interviewed scores of people over several years. In the end, he
concluded that neither mental illness nor dishonesty was behind their claims.
He said that, while he had never seen an alien himself, the most sensible
answer was that only the people’s own stories adequately explained their
recollections.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek

Another well-credentialed investigator of
UFOs was Dr. J. Allen Hynek, an astrophysicist who wrote the introduction to
Raymond Fowler’s “The Andreasson Affair,” first published in 1979 and now
reissued. Hynek devised the well-known phrase “close encounter” to categorize
reports of UFO sightings: CE-I, a UFO seen within 500 feet; CE-II, a UFO that
left physical traces; CE-III, a UFO with “animated creatures.” Other
investigators added another category, close encounters of the fourth kind, to
cover reports of abduction experiences.

Fowler, of Kennebunk, has spent much of his
life making detailed investigations into UFO and abduction reports. His book
“The Allagash Abductions” is the main source of information for the well-known
incident that took place on Eagle Lake in August 1976. It transcribes and
discusses the content of hypnosis sessions the four participants underwent to
retrieve memories of being taken into a craft they saw hovering above the lake
one dark night, of being examined, and then returning to their campsite.

“The Andreasson Affair” takes the same
approach. It’s made up mainly of passages from transcriptions of hypnosis
sessions in which Betty Andreasson and her daughter, Becky, describe events
that took place in (and beyond) their house in South Ashburnham, Mass., in late
January 1967. The story is, not to put too fine a point on it, bizarre.

The family sees a bright light outside. The
power goes out briefly. Then their waking memories get fuzzy. But nagged by
strange imagery from the dreamlike incident, Betty 10 years later hears of
Hynek’s research and writes to him. Hynek tells Fowler, and Betty is convinced
to try hypnosis regression. Under hypnosis, she tells the story of a classic
abduction incident – classic because, as Mack and others knew, the many reports
have generally similar patterns and events.

Betty describes being led out of the house by
entities about 4 feet tall with “gray skins and large, outsized pear-shaped
heads [and] … large, wraparound catlike eyes.” They reassure her throughout the
encounter, take her into a ship, through tunnels, into examining rooms and to
places completely elsewhere, some of the details holding religious
implications, then home. They tell her she has been chosen to reveal a message
to humanity involving the overruling importance of love and spirituality.

The fascinating question for most readers, of course, is: This
really happened?

Fowler doesn’t address the question directly. He sticks mainly to
Betty’s narrative, whose events he seems to understand implicitly to be real.
He offers comments and comparisons to other abduction accounts, and this 2014
edition adds some summary material to its predecessors, which include “The
Andreasson Affair – Phase Two” (1983) and “The Andreasson Legacy” (1997).

How you receive all this depends on how you go into it. If you
think close-encounter reports are hoaxes or mental illnesses, you won’t get
much. If like John Mack you’re curious about what actually is happening, then there’s
plenty of food for thought whether you believe in aliens or not.

You might even decide to treat this book like it’s fiction, and then, while
it’s not exactly polished prose, its events pile on with disturbing effect.

And as they do, a
nagging question courses underneath: If this was somehow real, what the hell is
going on here?

“The Andreasson Affair: The True Story of
a Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind” By Raymond E. Fowler; New Page Books,
Pompton Plains, N.J., 2014; 272 pages, trade paperback, $16.99